Media Release

Media Release

Summit finds answers to creating a billion jobs for young people

The International Youth Job Creation Summit, hosted at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills in London on Friday 13th September, 9am – 6pm, is the springboard for action to engage young people in the challenge of solving the youth unemployment crisis over the next decade.

Helping trigger this debate will be Lord Young, David Cameron’s Enterprise Advisor and Andris Piebalgs, EU Development Commissioner, along with young panellists including Melody Hossaini, former participant of The Apprentice and entrepreneur TJ Morgan.

Organised by Peace Child International (PCI) in partnership with Multiple Learning Solutions (MLS) and association with InspirEngage, this is the first in a series of high profile events where young people will meet and debate with policy makers, academics and leaders from the private, education and NGO sectors to find real solutions to the unemployment crisis which is affecting 73.4 million young people globally*.

Commissioner Piebalgs said: “We all recognise youth unemployment as one of the greatest challenges we face in Europe – if not the greatest. However, one major difference in many developing countries is that there, most people do not have access to any kind of social protection and even to basic services such as education, health or water and are often driven into extremely low-paid jobs, with unsafe or difficult conditions. We simply cannot accept that. Having a decent job, particularly for young people, is clearly linked with economic growth and poverty reduction, which is at the heart of EU’s development policy”.

Peace Child International will share the positive findings from their recent survey among its global youth network; despite the dire economic climate, 55% of young people under 30 were confident of being in full time paid employment within the next 2 years, with nearly half envisaging themselves being self-employed in 5 years time.

Janne Geurts, PCI’s Director of the Summit and Coordinator for the EU Youth Job Creation Network said: “Young people are often portrayed as victims of the global unemployment crisis, but we find that many hard working young people are exploring small businesses and social enterprises as a viable career option.”

TJ Morgan, one of the young panellists at the Summit who founded the successful online blog Nupé in his first year at university for aspiring young business people and entertainers said: “We felt young people, especially those from ethnic minorities, were mostly represented in a negative vein and there were not many outlets for positive news.”

The Summit will urge greater collaboration between young people, governments, public and private sectors – particularly in the field of education – with the aim of finding ways to provide young people with the tools to create, rather than look for, jobs in the future.

Hilary Mason, Director, MLS believes: “One simple answer to youth unemployment would be to create and implement by 2024 a relevant, fit-for-purpose curriculum designed to develop the personal, interpersonal and employability skills all young people need to become happy, successful global citizens.”

David Woollcombe, PCI’s President said: “A billion young people out of work is a massive drain on national exchequers and a security threat to the State. This Summit will prove that if constructively engaged, young people can be a big part of the solution to creating a billion job opportunities over the next decade.”

• Peace Child International empowers youth to create the change they want to see in the world particularly in the fields of youth employment and sustainability. It manages the EU Youth Job Creation Network and facilitates job creation training around the world. PCI recently received an award from ‘Search for Common Ground’ in Washington DC attended by Hilary Clinton for their work with young people around the worldhttp://peacechild.org

• Multiple Learning Solutions creates innovative education programmes and resources for empowering children and young people in a number of fields including enterprise, sustainability, sport and the arts. MLS devised and wrote the official education programme for London 2012, Get Set, which reached 6.5 million young people in the UK http://www.multiplelearningsolutions.co.uk

• * figure taken from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) (Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013). Last September, the World Bank released an IEG report on Youth Employment which quoted the ILO’s figure of 73.4 million youth unemployed, globally, with a further 621 million ‘idle’ – not in work or seeking work. It also stated that 600 million youth would enter the job market within the next 10 years – with only 200 million jobs awaiting them. So: 73.4m+621m+600m – 200m = 1.094.4 billion.